Producer: 'I'm Sure Tom Feels Bad' About Brooke

Tom Cruise probably "feels bad" that his criticism of Brooke Shields last summer for her use of antidepressants was taken as a personal attack, a colleague of the actor says.

But Kathleen Kennedy, who produced Cruise's War of the Worlds with Steven Spielberg, tells CNN's Showbiz Tonight that she has no first-hand knowledge of the actor's true feelings, as recently reported in New York Daily News.

Meanwhile, a rep for Cruise, Arnold Robinson, tells Showbiz that the reports following Cruise's statements last year "were misrepresentations of what he actually said."

In 2005, while promoting War, Cruise talked with TV's Access Hollywood about Shields's admission in her book, Down Came the Rain, that she'd taken medication to cope with postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Rowan.

"When someone says (medication) has helped them, it is to cope, it didn't cure anything," Cruise said. "There is no science. There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever." Instead, Cruise suggested women take "vitamins and exercise," and warned that Shields had been "irresponsible." Still, he added, "I wish her well in life."

He later told Today's Matt Lauer, "As far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you have to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields – she's a wonderful and talented woman, and I want her to do well, and I know psychiatry is a pseudoscience."

Hollywood watchers have speculated that the resulting controversy was one of the reasons Viacom chief Sumner Redstone abruptly announced Wednesday that Paramount Pictures had severed ties with Cruise, citing Cruise's "recent conduct."

Producer Kennedy also reportedly told the Daily News that Spielberg had not, as was rumored last year, been upset by Cruise's actions while promoting War. "It's not true," she says. "(Tom) was a consummate professional. He's done nothing wrong."

Spielberg, head of Paramount-owned DreamWorks, was blindsided by Wednesday's announcement, his rep, Marvin Levy, says. "The story broke when Steven was on an airplane. He found out when the plane landed," Levy tells the Daily News. The director "had no advance knowledge of Sumner Redstone's position," Levy also said.

Adding to the chorus of voices weighing in on the Cruise-Paramount split, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tells the paper, "(Redstone) has the right to say what he wants," adding, "It's not what I would do."